Sonia rose slowly from her chair, her features haggard and blanched, her head bent slightly, as if in penitence. No effort did she make to resent the bitter, angry words my wife had uttered, but in a low tone simply replied,—
“I have come here with Geoffrey, to tell you the truth.”
“The truth!” echoed the Grand Duchess, with withering contempt. “The truth from such as you! Who would believe it?”
“Wait! Hear me before you denounce me,” Sonia urged, in a strange, hollow voice, that sounded like one speaking in the far distance. “I do not deny that my presence may seem unwarrantable. I admit that between us there can no longer be friendship, yet strange it is that, although you are honest, upright and respected, while I am a social outcast, spurned and degraded by all, there nevertheless exists a common bond between us—the bond of love. You love Geoffrey, the man who by law is your husband; while I love another, a man you also know;” and her voice faltered, “the man to whom you denounced me as base and worthless.”
“Well?” asked Ella, standing stern, upright, full of calm, unruffled dignity. She still wore the cool-looking summer gown in which she had been driving in the Bois, and had not removed her large black hat with its long ostrich plumes.
“You are quite right, quite right,” Sonia admitted in a voice trembling with emotion. “You were justified to undeceive him as you did. I know, alas! how black is my heart—how blunted is all the womanly feeling I once possessed, like you. But you have been nurtured in the lap of luxury, while I, fed from infancy upon the offal of a slum, and taught to regard the world from a cynical point of view, have grown old in evil-doing, and am now a mere derelict in the stream of life. Long ago we met, and parted. I treated you, as I did others, as an enemy. We have now met again, and I, conscience-stricken and penitent, have come to atone for the past—to prove your friend, to beg forgiveness.”
My wife shrugged her shoulders with a gesture of quick impatience.
“Ah! You don’t believe I am in earnest,” cried the unhappy woman. “Has it never occurred to you that I alone can free you from the bond that has held you aloof from your husband?”
“What do you mean?” cried Ella, with a puzzled expression.
“I mean,” she answered, in a deep, earnest voice. “I mean that if you will make full and open confession to Geoffrey I will furnish you with proof positive of the identity of the murderer of Dudley Ogle. By this means only can you obtain freedom from your bondage of guilt.”